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'Machete Kills' Director Robert Rodriguez Lines Up 'Fire and Ice' After 'Sin City 2'

The prolific filmmaker has two sequels in his immediate future, to be followed by an animated film that pays tribute to the work of iconic artist Frank Frazetta.

Robert Rodriguez is a busy man. Since rebooting his Spy Kids franchise last year, the writer-director has lined up two highly anticipated sequels in his immediate future: Machete Kills and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. But in an interview with THR on Monday, Rodriguez indicated that he had a third film in development, which is set to start as soon as he’s finished with Sin City.

“That’s in the works to go right into after Sin City, Frank Frazetta’s Fire and Ice,” Rodriguez said during a telephone interview in conjunction with the Blu-ray release of his 1994 telefilm Roadracers. “We’re almost done with the script; we’ve got it pretty much 70 percent there. I’m really excited about that one.”

First announced during Comic-Con last year, Fire and Ice is a remake of Frazetta and Ralph Bakshi’s 1983 animated feature. According to previous reports, Rodriguez said his goal is to re-create the depth and artistry of Frazetta’s iconic work. “The whole idea is to make it using the technology I used for Sin City because I want it to be as if you stepped into one of his paintings,” Rodriguez told The Playlist last year.

Meanwhile, Rodriguez indicated that his recently announced plans to finally tackle the sequel to Sin City should actually provide him with extra time to get the script for Fire and Ice into shape before the film goes into preproduction.

“I think the timing is going to work out just right, and we’ll have a finished script in the next month or so,” he said. “So we can start lengthier preproduction and we can go right into preproduction -- well, we’re actually in preproduction, sort of, or we’ve been doing a lot of the previsualization. But that would be the next thing after Sin City.”

Rodriguez’s Frazetta fandom extends to preservation and celebration of the artist’s work; at Comic-Con 2011, he premiered a gallery of original paintings from the artist that are scheduled to be showcased in a gallery in Austin. He said that he was looking forward to breathing new life into Frazetta’s artwork and introducing him to a new generation of sci-fi and fantasy fans.

“I’m really excited about that,” Rodriguez said. “For Frazetta fans, this will be the ultimate tribute to what he did, and inspired so many people. I think it’s going to be pretty powerful when people see it.”

Roadracers, a Showtime movie starring David Arquette and Salma Hayek, was released April 17 on Blu-ray.